Diamond Dwellings

Real Estate News Category

Thank you Ms. Curtis… Arcado has great teachers!

Posted By Lane Bailey on May 18th, 2010

My oldest son is getting ready to graduate Kindergarten. And he has been loving it. Much of that credit needs to go to his teacher, Ms. Curtis, at Arcado Elementary School in Lilburn, GA…

The class that he is in is a ‘multi-age’ class that includes Kindergartners and First Graders. It is called a CLE class, or Continuous Learning Environment. And for my son, it has been a marvelous experience. Each Kindergartner is paired up with a First Grader. They work as a team, with the First Grader mentoring the Kindergarten student.

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What is a Community Improvement District?

Posted By Lane Bailey on May 13th, 2010

Here in Lilburn, GA, in the heart of Gwinnett County, we are on the path to getting our second Community Improvement District (CID).

But what does that mean?

The basis of a CID is a geographically defined area, with businesses choosing to install a special tax on themselves in order to improve the area… and their businesses. The property owners, representing at least 75% of the property value in the area, agree to tax themselves, and then elect a board to oversee how the money is used.

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Lilburn Market Report – March, 2010

Posted By Lane Bailey on May 9th, 2010

Market stats for Lilburn, GA March, 2010, indicate that there are 419 properties on the market (as of March 31st). Overall, there is about a 15.3 month supply of properties, with a slowing in sales since December. That is fairly normal for the winter season. March sales were up compared to 2009, though.

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Hamilton Mill Bike Shops

Posted By Matt Fagioli on April 20th, 2010

Lately I’ve become excited about biking. In fact, I’ve been riding a LOT. I first caught the bug doing the indoor kind called spinning. That’s where you lock yourself in a room with 20 other people and jam some really loud music for about an hour — while riding a funny looking stationary bike. Anyway, that’s what got me into it.

I recently bought a mountain bike (pictured) AND a road bike (cuz I wanted to do both). My road bike is what they call a hybrid. It sorta looks like a mountain bike with skinny tires. And, I also bought a mountain bike for my son so we could ride the trails together.

As it turned out, I bought all three bikes from three different shops in the Hamilton Mill area so I thought I’d write this post to share my experiences and give some links to those shops. Since I had great experiences with all three shops, I can really recommend all of them! Each is slightly different depending on what you want, but all of them passed inspection with me

My hybrid bike is pictured below. I had to steal this picture off the KHS website (can’t believe I don’t have a good picture of it yet myself). I bought it from Addicitive Cycles up in Hoschton. I went there before any other shops because a reliable source told me that “all the real serious bikers go there”. Based on what I saw going on there, I guess I could imagine that to be true. Since I’m just a total newbie to biking, I can’t really confirm or deny that for sure. You can judge for yourself. BUT, I can say that Cody and his team up there were awesome, friendly and made me feel very welcome even though they obviously deal with a pretty “serious biker” clientele.

I only had my hybrid for about a week when I realized that I really wanted a mountain bike too (for the trails) and the hybrid for the roads and the paved trails in Mulberry Park. My mountain bike (top photo) is a Specialized (that’s the brand) and I bought from Outback Bikes located in the Hamilton Mill Publix shopping center. I LOVE that bike. It’s super cool (I think). Outback Bikes is a great little shop. They actually have two locations. They had good inventory also. Great service (not just saying that either). By the way, if you want to start mountain biking in Gwinnett, Ft Yargo is a great trail to start on.

I bought my son’s bike over at Knight Bikes & Skateboards. As you can tell from the name, they have bikes and boards. It’s a bigger shop so they have pretty good inventory of both. I think they had a few more “middle-of-the-road” bikes and bikes for kids, etc. It might be the family bike shop of the three (although Outback certainly fits that bill too).

Are you into biking too? Please let me know in the comments here.

Hamilton Mill Real Estate Report Q1 2010 from Diamond Dwellings

Posted By Matt Fagioli on April 14th, 2010

The first quarter of 2010 has come to a close. 21 homes were sold in Hamilton Mill over those first 3 months of the year. This is our usual “quick snapshot” of the sales results. It’s meant to give you a basic idea of what’s happening in the market. You’ll see as you look into the data that sharp analysis and accurate market values for your home (or any other comparable home) requires a more complete review of many other important variables such as closing costs (not reflected here) & seller motivation — including, of course, foreclosures and short sales. As always, more information and often more up-to-date information is often available here at HamiltonMillDwellings.com as the days and weeks pass going forward.

Pricing & Values…

Back in January, I used the term “reserved recovery” to describe our local market conditions here in Gwinnett County. I still think that represents an accurate assessment. In fact, I think we can expect exactly that for months to come — even a few years. If you look back at Georgia’s real estate values for decades (before 2003 or 2004) what you see is very slow, steady growth. Month after month & year after year – 2%, sometimes 3% annual growth. We’re returning to that pattern of positive (but slow & steady) growth.

How’s The Gwinnett Market…

This week I wrote a blog post about a national data report that just came out. It shows that pricing is still declining very slightly. However, sales volumes are rising with DOM (days-on-market) going down. This data supports my comments above. Here’s a link to find that national report.

What’s Next…

At the end of April, most of the first time home buyer tax credits will have expired. There is no indication from Washington that these credits will be extended any further. Most markets are improving slowly – and hopefully that trend with continue without these interventions in place. Spring is upon us and I’m predicting an improved Q2 vs ’08 and ’09. We shall see